


The long road home

by veeraha



Series: Kisses and some untold stories [2]
Category: Death Note
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Gen, Kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:09:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5312291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veeraha/pseuds/veeraha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Picking up the broken pieces and putting them together is never easy, and L learns the hard way as he tries to glue back together the world left in tatters in the wake of Kira's wrathful reign of terror.<br/>Drabble based on a tumblr prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The long road home

The whole world watched the death of a god with bated breath, glasses frozen halfway to the lips, tea getting cold, the baby’s cries forgotten. Kira’s malignant infamy should have come with an assurance of a spectacular death, one that would surely be devoured with a pleasurable kind of guilt, something akin to voyeurism- discussed, dissected and not easily forgotten.

But the news of Kira’s anticlimactic demise didn’t get the amount of airtime it should have. The public didn’t need another reason to stay awake at night. A handful had felt the faint stirrings of rebellion at the back of their minds when everyone else had already accepted the murderer’s judgement as divine will, and they were the first ones to hit the chatrooms of the deepest corners of the internet with throwaway accounts as soon as the news broke.

_**‘KIRA IS DEAD.’** _

_**‘THE JAPANESE TASK FORCE HAS CONFIRMED THAT KIRA IS DEAD.’** _

_**‘JUSTICE LIVES!!’** _

_**‘THE DEMON-GOD IS DEAD. LONG LIVE TRUE JUSTICE. LONG LIVE L.’** _

**Long live L.**

One half of the monitor shows the unmistakable plain black gothic 'L' over a white background and the other displays grainy black and white footage from security cameras set halfway across the world: obscure hamlets in Eastern Europe, fish markets of Hong Kong, dimly lit streets of a lonely desert town in Mexico.

Masked men rejoice, waving flags, singing soundless chants.

Effigies fall to the ground, engulfed in flames, their painted-on paper faces forever stretched into a scream of agony as they curl into smoke.

The scenes flicker oddly on the split screen set over the gleaming chestnut table, its blurred reflection lighting up the cavernous emptiness of an otherwise dark room. The warning lights atop the nearest steel monolith bathes the room in a periodic strobe of red.

The world is watching, its breath held, as their champion sits atop a leather armchair, a fork in hand.

The three greatest detectives in the world all find home in one small, fragile body.

The red velvet cupcakes succumb to the fork as it is lifted and held it to the mouth.

Alternate sits beside L: the protégé, the successor.

All of this will be his one day.

He smiles at L, a smile that rings with familiarity.

Watari stands behind L like the sentinel he is, always watchful.

‘Are they ready for me?’, L asks.

Watari holds the door open for L, and L walks out. T

he victor, the face of justice, the slayer of the demon they call him and yet they have never seen the real face behind that singular letter.

Alternate follows L, still smiling. His smile reminds L of tragedy, mannequins with dead eyes and crying children. He wraps his arms around L’s waist as they walk.

Their footsteps resonate across the glass and steel hallway and there’s a loud collective intake of breath as the remaining members of the task force get on their feet.

The sound of L’s heels shatters the viscous silence and it’s like coming face to face with a ghost.

Matsuda is, uncharacteristically, the first one forward and he offers L a small bow and takes her outstretched hand in his. His eyes bore into L’s and they are toughened, lined with age. He is nothing like what she had expected.

‘Mr. Matsuda’, she adds in English, ‘I have heard of your bravery. Thank you for risking your life for all of us. You have my gratitude.’

_She sounds like Ryuzaki and..Oh God...Red hair, deep brown eyes that sparkle with a quiet, unassuming sort of intelligence, a straight, proud nose, even her smile is almost mocking. She looks like..like **him**._

Matsuda has all but spent three minutes in her presence and the walls he’d built around those memories come crashing down and threaten to stain his composure. The thoughts spiral in his head, burning everything they touch and the young man beside L leans in as if he’d heard them loud and clear. Matsuda takes his hand silently and his touch is like a cooling salve.

‘Matsuda-san. I am L’s alternate. My name is B’, he adds with a heavy accent that is so like Ryuzaki, that tears prick in his eyes.

_They’re so young. What if they end up the same way?_

The man, B, wraps an arm around him and pats him on the back and the intrusiveness of the gesture stuns the tears in Matsuda’s eyes into falling over and trailing down his cheeks.

_They have all lost something. The fire has claimed as much from them as it has from him._

He still couldn’t look into the new L’s eyes, and he half expects her to scream at him for shooting at her and it’s all too much. But she has somehow sensed his discomfort, and excuses him with a small bow of her head and Matsuda all but wants to hold her hand and apologise.

‘I understand your condition. I have seen the photographs of Ligh-‘

Matsuda’s breath hitches and he averts his eyes immediately, brushing his tears away with the back of his hand.

‘Kira’, L breathes the word out, punctuating it with a defeated slump of her shoulders that doesn’t suit the title she now holds. B is by her side, rubbing her shoulder and holding her gaze with his, looking for any trace of pain in her eyes and L reaches out to grasp his fingers tightly.

_It’s like they’re here, together, like they were supposed to be._

_This is how it should have ended._

* * *

 

Evening settles down on them, like a dark, cool shroud that curls against the drying ink of the last signatures put on the formalities.

Aizawa and Mogi stood at the other end of the chestnut table sombre and silent, nodding morosely in approval of whatever L was saying. The other man, B had been discussing matters of Ryuzaki’s estate with the elderly man Matsuda assumes is Watari’s replacement. Matsuda had never been in this room before and he’s secretly glad they didn’t choose to have the meeting in the rooms the task force had used earlier. He is sure he’ll hear the clink of Ryuzaki’s handcuffs if he listens hard enough.

Meeting Sayu and her mother after Light’s funeral had been an experience he doesn’t want to repeat anytime soon and yet, he found himself unable to refuse as L asked his help in setting up a visit to the Yagami household to pay their respects to, according to what Light’s family had been informed, a martyr, one who laid down his life for thousands of others.

That is in fact the delusion that Kira had been operating under and the cruel sense of irony in that statement is not lost on Matsuda.

His head reels and the elderly man, Roger, places a cup of tea in front of him as L smiles at him from the other side of the room. She’s really making an effort to make him comfortable and Matsuda wishes he weren’t so weak.

* * *

 

_The room is bare, and there’s a single wreath of white roses on the table beside the coffin that they had placed there._

_There were no other flowers, and no other mourners._

**_No one knows he’s dead. No one knew he’d even lived._ **

_They’d always known this would happen, they’d steeled their minds against the inevitability of it. Replacements, successors: that’s their function. The players change, but the game itself is never-ending. Protocol, chain of succession, all written in black and white on yellowing papers, signed, stamped. They didn’t get the real meaning of it until now._

_‘He told me he was afraid. He knew he was going to die this time’, B’s voice sends shards of broken glass through A’s heart. But she smiles like she’s been taught to._

_‘He was right then’, she buries her face against B’s back and B bends over the coffin, taking L’s hand in his._

_They don’t bid him goodbye and A leans over and kisses L’s forehead._

**_He’s dead. L is dead._ **

_There is something that doesn’t sit right with kissing a corpse and A’s mouth feels tainted somehow._

_B brushes her tears away with his lips and they embrace while strangers around them prepare to lay L to rest._

* * *

 

L’s neck is stiff and B rubs the knots away from her shoulders. The hotel room is dark and silent and they let their masks slip, nursing their wounds.

‘I’m sorry you had to go through all that’, B rests his forehead against hers and her eyes are scrunched shut, like she can still hear Mrs. Yagami’s cries in her head.

‘The girl. Sayu.’

‘She’ll be taken care of. I’ve spoken to Roger already.’

The shadows under her eyes seem darker than usual and B kisses her eyes and holds her close. She melts in his arms, and her lips find his in the dark.

It was always just the three of them, back in Winchester cuddling beside the fire, reading, talking through the night while snow fell outside in languid swirls.

‘I want to go home B’, she whispers against his lips.

Her petulance is justified. Picking up the broken pieces and smiling through the pain is what they’d been taught. She may be L but she isn’t Ryuzaki and B wants her to remain this way. He wants her to cry out against the wrong, he wants to see her in pain. She isn’t just a mechanical voice or a black letter on a white screen.

She’s human, she bleeds and B is there to pick up her broken pieces and put her back.

He kisses her and she feels Ryuzaki melt away somewhere in between them.

They’re finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> A look at the aftermath of the Kira case where L dies and his successor A takes his place with Beyond birthday as the new Alternate.


End file.
